COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 The state can try again to put to death a condemned killer whose 2009 botched execution was called off after two hours, the Ohio Supreme Court said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The court by a 4-3 vote rejected arguments by death row inmate Romell Broom, whose attorneys said giving the state prisons agency a second chance would amount to cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had argued double jeopardy doesn\u2019t apply because lethal drugs never entered Broom\u2019s veins while executioners unsuccessfully tried to hook up an IV. They also said a previously unsuccessful execution attempt doesn\u2019t affect the constitutionality of his death sentence.<\/p>\n
With a federal appeal of the ruling likely, a second execution is years away. In addition, Ohio already has more than two dozen death row inmates with firm execution dates but no lethal drugs to put them to death with.<\/p>\n
Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger sided with the state in the case, saying the execution never began because the drugs were never administered.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause Broom\u2019s life was never at risk since the drugs were not introduced, and because the state is committed to carrying out executions in a constitutional manner, we do not believe that it would shock the public\u2019s conscience to allow the state to carry out Broom\u2019s execution,\u201d Lanzinger wrote.<\/p>\n
The majority opinion said it was unclear why Broom\u2019s veins couldn\u2019t be accessed, a fact that brings the rejection of his appeal into question, Justice Judi French wrote in a dissent.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the state cannot explain why the Broom execution went wrong, then the state cannot guarantee that the outcome will be different next time,\u201d French said.<\/p>\n
Broom was sentenced to die for raping and killing 14-year-old Tryna Middleton after abducting her in Cleveland in 1984 as she walked home from a football game with two friends.<\/p>\n
His 2009 execution was stopped by then-Gov. Ted Strickland after an execution team tried for two hours to find a suitable vein. Broom has said he was stuck with needles at least 18 times, with pain so intense he cried and screamed.<\/p>\n
An hour into the execution, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction recruited a part-time prison doctor with no experience or training with executions to try \u2014 again, unsuccessfully \u2014 to find a vein.<\/p>\n
Broom\u2019s appeals in federal court were on hold while the state court heard the constitutional arguments.<\/p>\n
Broom, 59, has been back on death row since. No new execution date has been set.<\/p>\n
A message was left with Broom\u2019s attorneys seeking comment. The state\u2019s top public defender said it\u2019s long been understood that the government gets one attempt at an execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether you believe it\u2019s the hand of God or just basic government failure, as happened in this case, they don\u2019t get to do this again,\u201d Tim Young, head of the Ohio Public Defender\u2019s Office, said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Ohioans to Stop Executions, the state\u2019s leading anti-death penalty group, criticized the ruling, saying the 18 times Broom was stuck with needles as he lay strapped to a gurney demonstrate the execution had begun.<\/p>\n
Requiring Broom to endure another execution attempt would double up his punishment by forcing him to relive the pain he\u2019s already been through, his attorneys, Adele Shank and Timothy Sweeney, argued in a court filing last year.<\/p>\n
During a June hearing, Chief Justice Maureen O\u2019Connor asked Shank about a prison official\u2019s testimony that Broom may have caused the problems with his veins by ingesting an entire box of antihistamines the day before to dehydrate himself. Shank, in seeking to rebut the state\u2019s argument about purposeful hydration, said she saw Broom drinking coffee the day of the execution. Chris Schroeder, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, said the antihistamines allegation was not part of the state\u2019s argument.<\/p>\n
In 1947, Louisiana electrocuted 18-year-old Willie Francis by electric chair a year after an improperly prepared electric chair failed to work. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to allow the second execution to proceed, rejecting double jeopardy arguments. A state\u2019s administration of its criminal law isn\u2019t affected by due process rights, when \u201can accident, with no suggestion of malevolence, prevents the consummation of a sentence,\u201d the court ruled at the time.<\/p>\n
Ohio prosecutors said lower courts properly determined that any mistakes happened during Broom\u2019s execution preparations, not the actual procedure.<\/p>\n
Schroeder said the evidence shows that the state wasn\u2019t deliberately trying to hurt Broom and that nearly two dozen successful executions since 2009 mean such an event couldn\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https:\/\/twitter.com\/awhcolumbus. His work can be found at http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/content\/andrew-welsh-huggins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) \u2014 The state can try again to put to death a condemned killer whose 2009 botched execution was called off after two hours, the Ohio Supreme Court said Wednesday. The court by a 4-3 vote rejected arguments by death row inmate Romell Broom, whose attorneys said giving the state prisons agency a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4793"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}